


Can I ask for this?

by sherlock221Bismymuse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Boys In Love, Croatoan, Light Angst, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24894580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlock221Bismymuse/pseuds/sherlock221Bismymuse
Summary: Coda Set at the end of the Croatoan episode
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the episode.

After it was all over, Sam found Dean leaning on the hood of the Impala, drinking beer. His silver ring glinting in the setting sun as he lifted the bottle to his lips.

Sam leaned in next to him, not looking at him directly, and took the offered second beer bottle. When half the bottle was gone he gathered the courage and spoke.

“Dean…..would you really have…...If I had….” He faltered. He couldn’t get himself to even say it. He could feel the hot tears burning behind his eyes and his voice shook.

_Dean would have killed himself?! Dean?? Dad’s perfect son. The brilliant hunter. The best brother in the world. He would have just…._

The memory of Dean sitting there in front of him in the locked room, calm and collected, checking that his gun had two bullets, having tossed away the key to the Impala so the others could leave…….sent a chill down Sam’s spine again.

“Dean. Please! Please promise me that if anything like this happens and you have to….….and you can’t save me….. then you MUST save yourself. Please Dean! Find someone. Grow old. Be happy.”

Sam didn’t even bother to wipe the tears now flowing freely down his face as his voice was thick with emotions.

Dean was quiet for a beat and then he turned and looked at Sam. His eyes flashed with pain when he saw that Sam was in tears. He reached out and softly wiped the tears away as a reflex. He gave a slow, sad smile.

“My life has only ever been about saving _you_ Sammy. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.” Dean huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Find someone?! Grow old?! Be happy?! Do you know how impossible any of this would be without you?! If I had to …..….if I couldn’t save you?”

Sam pushed himself off the warm car and stepped in front of Dean. He came in closer, slowly, waiting for Dean to put his arm out and hold him away. To tell him to stop with the chick flick moments. To deflect. To move on. To move away.

Instead, Dean waited till Sam was right in front of him and then asked. “Do you have _any_ idea how I survived the years that you were away in Stanford Sammy? When you left me?”

“I didn’t leave you!” Sam said, instant anger flaring at the accusation. “You know that Dean! It was _never_ about leaving you! How could I?! You…….YOU chose Dad over me. HE said don’t ever come back and you……YOU never said anything. You left me alone Dean! YOU!”

Sam stood there facing Dean, with his fists clenched, angry tears falling again. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

Dean gave a bitter laugh. “Would you really have stayed? For me?? And then what? Resented me your whole life for stopping you from being ‘normal’? I couldn’t Sammy. Once you said you wanted to leave……I just couldn’t think any more. All I could hear was white noise in my head.”

He paused and looked Sam in the eye. “Why didn’t you ask me to come with you?”

.

.

Sam was so shocked he was almost speechless. He blinked in confusion.

“What….would you….would you have?! Would you have left Dad??”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah…maybe not …….but then I did anyway.”

“What?!” Sam stared at him.

“Yeah.” Dean replied casually, looking away. “I lasted two whole days before I also left. Said I wanted to do my own hunts. Told him that since he was away for so long and so often it made sense for us to go our separate ways. He agreed. I think he realized that the day he closed the door on you he lost me too.”

“Oh Dean!” Sam whispered in anguish, knowing what it must have cost his brother to walk away from Dad, his idol, his hero. “But……then why didn’t you come to me?!! All those years…..”

Dean replied so softly that Sam barely heard him. “Because you never asked me to.”

.

.

Sam felt his knees give way.

He felt faint with the weight of this knowledge. He could have had this four years ago! He could have had Dean every day of those hundreds upon hundreds of days they spent apart.

_All this time he had been angry and resentful that Dean never sought him out. Dean never followed him. Dean stayed away. Dean abandoned him. When in fact Dean would have come in an instant if he had not believed that Sam wanted to leave him. To leave him?? Him?! The brother he adored and worshipped?!_

_The brother who was his first and true love even before he really understood what love meant? The brother he is still so much in love with but he would rather die than confess it._

Sam gave a hysterical laugh as he slid down to sit on the dusty road, leaning against the car as his entire past came tumbling down, shifting shapes and images till nothing seemed real any more.

_Dad had told Dean to save Sam but who was given the task to save Dean??_

_._

_._

Dean sat down next to him carefully, a few inches away. “You wanted normal so badly Sammy. And me?? I was as far from normal as you could get. If Jessie hadn’t ……you know……well you would have married her, had babies. You would probably not even have invited me to the wedding.”

Sam was silent.

_What could he say? He had wanted ‘normal’. He had wanted something different. Something better. He just wanted to leave that horrible life behind. It had never even occurred to him that Dean would think he was leaving him. Dean—who knew his thoughts before he had them--how had he reached such a terribly wrong conclusion??_

_If Dean had not come to him when he did, would they ever have been in each other’s lives again?_

He shivered at the thought. He asked. “What if Mom hadn’t…you know…….would _you_ have had a normal job? A regular life?”

Dean nodded and said lightly. “Yeah. Sure. I would have been a porn star.”

“Really Dean.” Sam said dryly. “While mom was alive you would have been a porn star?”

Dean gave him a smirk and winked. Sam frowned and turned away.

“Hey Sammy. What happened?” Dean asked at once. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“I am not …mad at you Dean. Ok, well, I am. Why don’t you ever let me in? Why do you always….always have to be so strong?”

Dean was quiet for so long that Sam was worried. Then Dean spoke slowly.

“I can’t let you in any more than you already are Sammy. You’ve been woven into my very being. There isn’t anything else left. These things I say when I deflect….…I say these things to protect you. I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“Oh Dean.” Sam said in despair. “All I have done is let you down and you…”

Dean cut him off sharply. “You have _never_ let me down…..don’t ever say that! And anyway it’s all behind us now. You are safe and we are here. Together. What more can we ask for?”

Sam looked at him and wondered.

_What more would Dean ask for? What more could he himself dare to ask for? They had both been about to die. Dean had been about to die…without ever knowing what he meant to his Sammy. How he was Sam’s whole world and how he filled up Sam’s heart so full to bursting and how nothing else mattered and how he had allowed himself to love Jessie only because he never thought he would ever see Dean again._

Maybe this was a second chance.

“Right Sammy? What more can we ask for?” Dean asked again and Sam looked into his eyes and thought he saw something which gave him courage. He realized that maybe Dean wanted him to ask for it first. Maybe Dean _needed_ him to ask for it first.

“This.” Sam said as he leaned in slowly and waited to see if Dean would stop him. “Can I ask for this?”

He was almost shaking with the fear of what could be the consequences if he has read this wrong, and to his surprise Dean moves closer. It is barely noticeable but Sam takes it for permission. He holds his brave brother’s beautiful face gently in his hands and leans in some more.

“I want to ask for this Dean. I want to ask for you to be mine. For you to make me yours. I want to be with you and live with you and wake up next to you every single day for the rest of my life. Can I ask for this?”

“Enough with the words already college boy.” Dean said in a hoarse voice as he closed the distance between them and touched his lips to Sam’s.

.

.

At that first touch of their lips it was as though the chaotic noise and empty yearning stilled in Sam’s head and the dull throbbing pain Dean didn’t even know he was carrying in his heart till now, turned lighter and softer and disappeared.

Dean shifted and held Sam’s face and deepened the kiss gently, almost reverently and Sam opened up to him and worshipped him. They kissed and kissed and Sam moved and straddled Dean and carried on kissing.

Through salty tears and half smiles he felt himself grow hard and he could feel Dean getting hard against him. He rocked on his lap and Dean gasped.

“Sammy, baby, not here!” Dean said in a broken voice as they separated reluctantly. “Our first time should not end with us being hauled off by the cops!”

Sam couldn’t control his full body shiver at hearing what Dean called him. He leaned and touched his forehead to Dean’s. “Say it again Dean."

He could feel Dean frown. “Our first time should not….”

“No no. The other thing.” Sam said as his cheeks flushed.

Dean was still for second, trying to recall what he said and then he chuckled.

“Sammy….baby.” He whispered. “You like me calling you that sweetheart?”

“Dean!!” Sam melted into him, tucking his head into Dean’s neck at the sudden attack of shyness.

Dean laughed and after many more kisses they eventually managed to get up into the Impala and drive to a motel with Dean finding them something that was far better than one of their usual dumps.

.

.

Later, Dean was lying down on his side, head propped up, looking at Sam with such devotion in his eyes that Sam could barely hold it together.

He still couldn’t believe that they had gone from a situation where they could have both died in that clinic to being here now, in bed together. He was still enjoying the afterglow and wishing he could stay here like this forever, looking at Dean smiling.

He had seen all kinds of Dean smiles. Sarcastic smirks, wolfish grins to women in the bars, fake smiles to witnesses, sly smiles, come hither smiles, blank eyed smiles, happy smiles, lazy smiles. But this smile? This smile was tender and soft and loving and made him feel so cherished and so safe and so alive and he knew for sure that no one else in the whole wide world had ever seen this one. And no one else ever would.

He lifted his hand and trailed it down Dean’s cheek and throat and chest and rested it over his heart.

Dean held it there with his own hand and answered the question in Sam’s eyes.

“Yes sweetheart. You can ask for this. And you will have this. Always and forever.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same story from Dean's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t plan for a second chapter at all but then Dean Winchester came in my dreams and raised one perfect eyebrow and made a questioning face. Won’t you tell them my perspective? How will they know? 
> 
> How can anyone resist that :)

After it was all over, Dean pulled out a beer bottle from the cooler and stood leaning against the hood of the Impala, drinking. Hoping against hope that Sam was going to let this be and let them move on without having to talk it out. He watched warily as Sam came out of the clinic and walked towards him. He took a long sip to fortify himself. Sam had on his “I- am- worried- for- you- and -you- have- to -talk- to- me- till- I -am- satisfied- with- what- you- said’ face.

Dean wished he had something stronger than beer.

Sam leaned in next to him, not looking at him directly, and took the offered second beer bottle. As he drank in silence Dean hoped they would be able to just move on and go to the next hunt and never ever discuss what had just happened.

The memory of that room, and the expression of despair on Sammy’s face when he realized he was infected….those assholes who dared even think of killing him……the realization that if anyone really did need to finally kill Sammy it would have to be him……..and the perfect clarity of knowing that the next bullet would most certainly go into his own brain…….Dean was quite sure, thank you very much, that he never wanted to talk about it ever again. To anyone. And certainly not to Sam.

He was so finely attuned to his brother that he could sense him gathering up courage to speak, and could almost hear him swallow and take a breath….and _here it comes_ Dean thought, resigned to it.

“Dean…..would you really have…...If you had to….if you had not been able to save me?” Sam faltered.

Dean could hear his voice shake and his own heart started hammering double time.

_What was he supposed to say to console Sam? To help him understand why he had planned to do what he had?? How could he say I love you, not just as a brother but as the love of my life? How could he say you are The One for me Sammy. How could he tell him that when Dad told him if he couldn’t save Sam he had to kill him, he signed a death warrant for both his sons?_

_Kill Sam?? The most beautiful boy to have ever walked this planet? That perfect human being who fought relentlessly for what he believed in? The boy Dean raised and mothered and fathered and somewhere along the way fell in love with? That young man with the looks of a Greek god? The one Dean fell in love with again when he saw him after all those years away at Stanford? Dean was supposed to kill that boy and then continue to breathe and live?_

“Dean. Please!” Sam was saying. “Please promise me that if anything like this happens and you have to….….and you can’t save me….. then you MUST save yourself. Please Dean! Find someone. Grow old. Be happy.”

Dean was quiet for a beat and then he turned and looked at Sam. His eyes flashed with pain when he saw that Sam was in tears. He reached out and softly wiped the tears away as a reflex. He gave a slow, sad smile. _Ok. Let’s do this_ , he thought to himself.

“My life has only ever been about saving _you_ Sammy. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.” Dean huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Find someone?! Grow old?! Be happy?! Do you know how impossible any of this would be without you?! If I had to …..….if I couldn’t save you?”

Sam pushed himself off the warm car and stepped in front of Dean. He came in closer, slowly.

Dean was waiting, watching and wondering.

_Did Sam realize what he meant to Dean? How he was his whole world and the sun moon and stars? How Dean had felt like he was only half alive when Sam left for Stanford? When Sam walked out of the door with his heart and left him a hollow shell to live in?_

_Sam would have died earlier today never knowing all of this. Maybe it was time for him to know? Maybe he needed to understand that the reason Dean did what he did was not only because of what Dad had said. He needed to know that there was nothing Dean would not do for him. He needed to understand that this whole planet was worth nothing but a handful of dust to him if it didn’t have Sam in it. Sam living and breathing and happy and beautiful and passionate and adorable._

So Dean waited till Sam was right in front of him and then asked. “Do you have _any_ idea how I survived the years that you were away in Stanford Sammy? When you left me?”

“I didn’t leave you!” Sam said, instant anger flaring at the accusation. “You know that Dean! It was _never_ about leaving you! How could I?! You…….YOU chose Dad over me. HE said don’t ever come back and you……YOU never said anything. You left me alone Dean! YOU! Why didn’t you stop me?”

Dean gave a bitter laugh. This was crazy talk. “Would you really have stayed? For me?? And then what? Resented me your whole life for stopping you from being ‘normal’? I couldn’t Sammy. Once you said you wanted to leave……I just couldn’t think any more. All I could hear was white noise in my head.”

Then like a true hunter, he went for the kill. Knife to the heart…and twist.

He paused and looked Sam in the eye. “Why didn’t you ask me to come with you?”

.

.

Sam seemed to be speechless with shock and confusion.

“What….would you….would you have?! Would you have left Dad??”

Dean hesitated. _Of course Sam didn’t know that when he left he broke whatever tenuous threads of family had been tying them all together. Dean could barely stay inside his own skin, let alone stay and look at Dad and talk to him and work with him. He wanted to just run and kill. He was shaking with pent up rage and wanted to tear things down and shred everything in sight. How could he possibly explain that to Sam?_

So he just shrugged. “Yeah…maybe not …….but then I did anyway.”

“What?!” Sam stared at him.

“Yeah.” Dean replied casually, looking away. “I lasted two whole days before I also left. Said I wanted to do my own hunts. Told him that since he was away for so long and so often it made sense for us to go our separate ways. He agreed. I think he realized that the day he closed the door on you he lost me too.”

“Oh Dean!” Sam whispered in anguish. Dean knew he would realize what it meant for him to have effectively left Dad. For Sam.

The Sam asked something Dean was not prepared for.

Sam said “But……then why didn’t you come to me?!! All those years…..”

Dean almost closed his eyes and wished he could disappear. He knew it would sound needy and sentimental and weak and he would hate himself for it but now it had to be said.

Sam needed to know.

Dean gathered all his courage and said as softly as he could, knowing that the words would hit Sam hard. “Because you never asked me to.”

.

.

Sam slid down against the car and sat on the ground.

Dean wondered how he could ever explain to Sam what he had felt that first day when he woke up to Sam’s actual absence in the room. And the way he had realized when he looked in the mirror that he was alone now. He had wondered how his heart kept on beating when he had been separated from Sam. The way he had fought hard against the desperate urge to just grab the car keys and go after Sam.

But then he had remembered that Sam was the one who had wanted to leave in the first place. Sam was the one who wanted ‘normal.’

So Dean would not go after him. He would go into hunts and kill monsters while the dark beast of loneliness and unspoken love ate at his heart every day. He would find women with whom he could enjoy the pleasures of the flesh and then he would swagger back to an empty room and all the pleasure would turn to ashes once again.

Sam would never know that Dean took a twin sharing room every single time for all those years and never once brought anyone else back because the second bed was for his brother. Sam would never know how often he picked up his phone to call him and how often he was unable to hold back the tears when driving down crazy street without the beautiful boy sitting by his side.

How utterly lonely he had been during those years but how determined to never trouble Sam with his feelings.

How vast and empty the sky used to seem when he would sit on the hood of the Impala and look at the stars, all alone.

How painful it used to be to realize that Sam had moved on so easily and never looked back. How devastating it used to be to learn to accept that he may never really be with Sam ever again.

_Dad had told Dean to save Sam but who was given the task to save Dean??_

_._

_._

Dean sat down next to Sam carefully, a few inches away. He reminded Sam gently. “You wanted normal so badly Sammy. And me?? I was as far from normal as you could get. If Jessie hadn’t ……you know……well you would have married her, had babies. You would probably not even have invited me to the wedding.”

Sam was silent.

Dean wondered what he was thinking about. He was sure he missed Jessie and probably hated Dean for coming that day and not only taking Sam back into the life but also bringing the old life back to him.

_If Dean had not come to him when he did, would they ever have been in each other’s lives again?_

Sam looked at Dean and asked him. “What if Mom hadn’t…you know…….would _you_ have had a normal job? A regular life?”

Dean nodded and said lightly. “Yeah. Sure. I would have been a porn star.”

“Really Dean.” Sam said dryly. “While mom was alive you would have been a porn star?”

Dean gave him a smirk and winked. This he could do well. Joke, Deflect. He hoped they had moved on from the heavy parts and soon they would get up, dust themselves off and move on. One more day in the life of Sam and Dean.

But Sam frowned and turned away.

“Hey Sammy. What happened?” Dean asked at once. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“I am not …mad at you Dean. Ok, well, I am. Why don’t you ever let me in? Why do you always….always have to be so strong?”

Dean was quiet for a while, mulling over how much he could say without hurting Sam more and without revealing that darkest and biggest secret of them all.

Dean spoke slowly and deliberately. “I can’t let you in any more than you already are Sammy. You’ve been woven into my very being. There isn’t anything else left. These things I say when I deflect….…I say these things to protect you. I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“Oh Dean.” Sam said in despair. “All I have done is let you down and you…”

Dean cut him off sharply. “You have _never_ let me down…..don’t ever say that! And anyway it’s all behind us now. You are safe and we are here. Together. What more can you ask for?”

The way Sam looked at him then made Dean’s stomach drop. It was as though Sam was looking right into his soul. As if he could see every feeling Dean had for him. Dean wondered if Sam would flinch away from him now. Whether he would guess at that love which was beyond labels and decide to walk away from him again.

Dean wondered idly if he would choose to live without Sam once again……or if the bullet with his name on it was already in his gun.

Maybe there were no second chances.

.

.

“Hey Sammy? What more can you ask for?” Dean asked again to break the heavy silence.

“This.” Sam said as he leaned in slowly.

Dean was unable to believe this was happening and held his breath.

_Could it be…..?? Was it possible that Sam also….?!! No no that made no sense!!! Seriously??!  
_  
Sam was leaning in closer and closer and there was no mistaking the intent in his eyes.

_Was this really going to happen?!!_  
  


And then Dean moved in the tiniest bit and found Sam holding his face.

He was almost shaking with the fear of what could be the consequences if he has read this wrong but Sam started talking to him and his heart soared in elation.

“I want to ask for this Dean. I want to ask for you to be mine. For you to make me yours. I want to be with you and live with you and wake up next to you every single day for the rest of my life. Can I ask for this?”

Dean thought his heart was going to burst and he was going to die before he could let Sam know that he feels the same way. He could barely form one sentence.

“Enough with the words already college boy.” Dean said in a hoarse voice as he closed the distance between them and touched his lips to Sam’s.

.

.

At that first touch of their lips it was as though the dull throbbing pain Dean didn’t even know he was carrying in his heart till now turned lighter and softer and disappeared.

Dean shifted and held Sam’s face and deepened the kiss gently, almost reverently and Sam opened up to him. They kissed and kissed and Sam moved and straddled Dean and carried on kissing.

Through salty tears and half smiles he felt Sam grow hard and he could feel himself getting hard against him. Just then Sam rocked on his lap and Dean gasped.

“Sammy, baby, not here!” Dean said in a broken voice as they separated reluctantly. “Our first time should not end with us being hauled off by the cops!”

Sam shivered and touched his forehead to Dean’s. “Say it again Dean!

Dean frowned. “Our first time should not….”

“No no. The other thing.” Sam said with cheeks flushed.

Dean was still for second, trying to recall what he said and then he chuckled. “Sammy….baby.” He whispered. “You like me calling you that sweetheart?”

“Dean!!” Sam melted into him, tucking his head into Dean’s neck at the sudden attack of shyness.

Dean laughed and after many more kisses they eventually managed to get up into the Impala and drive to a motel with Dean finding them something that was far better than one of their usual dumps.

.

.

Later, Dean was lying down on his side, head propped up, looking at Sam.

He still couldn’t believe that they had gone from a situation where they could have both died in that clinic to being here now, in bed together. Surely heaven could not offer anything more?

He was wishing he could stay here like this forever. He wondered if Sam would ever regret this because Dean could give him more love that the earth could hold, but he could not give him ‘normal.’

Maybe it was not too late to turn back. He wanted to say all this but all he could do was smile like a lovesick fool.

Then Sam lifted his hand and trailed it down Dean’s cheek and throat and chest and rested it over his heart.

Dean held it there with his own hand and he knew that all his worries had been for nothing.

He saw the question in Sam’s eyes and gave him the only answer he ever could have.

“Yes sweetheart. You can have this. Always and forever.”


End file.
